Nourishing Tomorrow

The following sections are included:

• Preface
• About the Editors
• Acknowledgments
• Contents

Arguably, to nourish or take care of the needs of all of humankind — sustainable and affordable access to clean water, safe sanitation, and clean air, together with a sufficiency of energy, food, and shelter — should be universally available. Yet, many humans do not enjoy such access or availability, even though it has been 70 years since the 1948 United Nations (UN) declaration on human rights proclaimed “that all human beings are equal, and have inherent rights.” However, only food and shelter were explicitly mentioned in the initial declaration. Others were recently added to the UN list, but not air and energy. Nevertheless, basic human needs do not have to be declared as a human right before national actions are taken. Today’s key driver is the UN 2030 Agenda, a plan to eradicate all global poverty and set the world onto a “sustainable and resilient path,” through the achievement of 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Adopted by all UN members, the 2030 Agenda in essence, is a 21^st century version of the 1948 proclamation. The SDGs explicitly detail, or implicitly in the case of clean air, all the necessary needs for the nourishing of tomorrow. To achieve the plan will likely require, at least, changes in national cultural values, eliminating inequalities and disparities, developing more appropriate governance strategies, and meaningful technical innovation. In this chapter, these requirements are discussed against a backdrop of presently known deficiencies in global nourishment needs.

Irrigation plays a fundamental role in guaranteeing food security. Increasing food production to meet the growing future demands of the world population will require not only the expansion of the irrigated area (i.e., through the conversion of rainfed land) and better water availability (both in space and time), but also greater efficiency in the use of resources. Both drivers of growth require complex institutional and policy reforms, especially in those regions of the world with water scarcity problems. In the particular case of Spain, the growth of agricultural production as a guarantor of food security appears to lack the support of an increase in resources (i.e., land and water), but not that of an increase in agricultural productivity. The analysis carried out in this chapter has shown that the achievement of a higher production per unit of productive factor used (especially per unit of water used) has been decisive in maintaining the production of the Spanish agricultural sector.

As the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) are a call to action by countries to promote prosperity while protecting the planet, the 17 goals aim to monitor 169 targets that collectively describe the progress towards achieving a sustainable future. This was necessitated by global challenges in resources degradation and depletion due to population growth, urbanization, migration, and improved living standards, demographic shifts, changing lifestyles, a burgeoning middle class, and the growing influence of climate change on the demand and supply chains of mainly water, energy, and food. As the SDGs were formulated in the context of challenges related to resource insecurity, climate change, and human wellbeing, and are designed to recognize the inter-linkages between human wellbeing, economic prosperity, and a healthy environment, this chapter establishes the linkages between resources. It provides pathways to assess progress towards sustainability. The principal question addressed in the chapter is whether the water–energy–food (WEF) nexus is an appropriate approach for linking and monitoring progress towards related SDGs, particularly Goals 2, 6, and 7, as reflected in the pursuit of water, energy, and food security.

Green Compressed Air Energy Storage (GCAES) is a new concept that combines thermal energy storage with traditional compressed air energy storage. The goal is to recover the heat of compression and reuse it during the expansion phase, thus eliminating the need for external heat. This chapter compares the overall performance of GCAES with its traditional Compressed Air Energy Storage (CAES) counterpart and estimates the amount of greenhouse gas reduction. Generally, a small change in one of the parameters of CAES systems can propagate to other factors, significantly altering the performance of the plant. A change in the system status can also alter the process parameters of the thermal sub-systems. The key process parameters are air and thermal fluid mass flow rates, temperature, and pressure of the system at each design point. These parameters can significantly influence the performance of a CAES plant. This chapter compares the effect of variations in these parameters on the performance of GCAES and traditional CAES plants with three stages of expansion. Thermodynamic model simulations were carried out over a pressure from 40 bar to 80 bar and hot water mass flow between 176 kg/s and 216 kg/s. The obtained results show that the net generated power for the GCAES and the traditional CAES systems are about 110 megawatts and 65 megawatts, with maximum efficiencies of 78.6% and 70.5%, respectively. This study also reveals that a GCAES not only makes accessible greater energy generation but can also reduce up to 80 tons of carbon dioxide (CO₂) per discharge cycle. This is equivalent to more than 270,000 tons of CO₂ emission per operating year for the modeled CAES plant.

Marinas serve the need of the boating community for a sheltered environment. Their development involves major shoreline modification that often includes land reclamation and the construction of seawalls and breakwaters. These have an impact on the natural shore ecosystem. The semi-enclosed waters become a modified environment with different hydrodynamic and physico-chemical conditions to the adjacent open sea. Various structures such as pontoons, piles, seawalls and breakwaters abound in the marina, increasing structural complexity of its water body. They provide opportunities for the colonization of biological communities that are not found in open water. Surveys of three Singapore marinas were conducted to examine if this highly modified environment in the tropics could promote the development of marine biodiversity. The soft bottom sediment of these marinas supported 73 macrobenthic taxa from eight phyla dominated by polychaetes. Submerged sides of the berthing pontoons were occupied by 94 epibiotic taxa, including macroalgae, soft corals and bivalves. The seawalls of one marina were naturally colonized by 21 genera of reef-building corals. In addition, 49 fish species comprising estuarine or reef-associated ones, inhabited the marinas. With adequate planning during the design, construction, and operational phases, marinas can co-function effectively as biodiversity sanctuaries. These include ensuring sufficient water exchange throughout the marina; providing hard substrates to facilitate colonization of reef-building species; encouraging “green” and non-polluting practices among marina users; as well as information-sharing between stakeholders via a systematic and sustained biodiversity monitoring programme.

Pharmaceutical pollution is a universal hazardous issue that affects humans and ecosystems through the release of active pharmaceutical ingredients (APIs). One of their major sources is antibiotics. These compounds survive classical treatment processes, which trigger the development of antibiotic-resistant bacterial strains in aquatic systems. Sulfamethoxazole is a widely used antibiotic that faces a change in the resistance patterns of the various bacterial strains that are sensitive to it. Since biodegradation is one of the main methods for pharmaceutical degradation, it requires the identification of the microbial strains that biodegrade various antibiotics to enable feasible upscale applications. In the work presented in this chapter, Chlorella vulgaris and Monoraphidium conortum were tested separately to degrade 3g/100 ml of sulfamethoxazole. A kinetic study was conducted to separately measure the degradation of the antibiotic by both strains. The results revealed that sulfamethoxazole increased the growth of Chlorella vulgaris and promoted its ability to produce both types of chlorophyll a and b, achieving maximum production of chlorophyll a of 0.135 mg/L and chlorophyll b of 0.095 mg/L at the 25^th day of growth while reaching only 0.1 mg/L of chlorophyll a and 0.034 mg/L of chlorophyll b in the control group. This was unlike the growth of Monoraphidium conortum that was inhibited by sulfamethoxazole achieving 0.09 mg/L of chlorophyll a and 0.079 of chlorophyll b in comparison to 0.094 mg/L of chlorophyll a and 0.12 of chlorophyll b in the control group. On the other hand, Chlorella vulgaris had a higher capacity to degrade sulfamethoxazole, reaching 0.024 mg/L of sulfamethoxazole after 20 days of introducing it to the algal culture, while Monoraphidium conortum degraded the antibiotic to 0.036 mg/L. These results suggest the supremacy of Chlorella vulgaris in the degradation of sulfamethoxazole while maintaining boosted growth behavior. A system of cell-immobilization support was designed and 3D-printed using micro texture to employ these systems in wastewater treatment from pilot to urban scales.

Skincare is one of the most important issues in the process of adapting to the changing and developing society of today’s women and men. In addition to being an area where women show more interest, a certain segment of men, if not most, care about skincare as well. In this chapter, while examining the products of some brands used for skincare, the authors has tried to find the most harmless of them. Step-wise Weight Assessment Ratio Analysis (SWARA), Additive Ratio Assessment (ARAS), and Complex Proportional Assessment (COPRAS) were used to select the most harmless skincare product. While SWARA was used to find the criteria weights, ARAS and COPRAS rules were applied to determine such a product, and the two methods were compared. Through the combination of these methods, skincare products of various brands were evaluated and determined to be the most harmless one. Pairwise combination of the three quantitative methods is a unique approach developed for the purpose of this study and it offers an objective assessment of various decision alternatives.

Using and consuming healthy and natural products has been of concern for many of us. We want all the products we eat, drink, wear, and use to be natural or healthy, but over the years, it has become either very difficult to find natural products or it can be very expensive. Cleaning our body and kitchen utensils with natural products has also recently emerged as an important issue. In this study, we evaluate washing liquids from the viewpoint of human and environmental health. While making the evaluation, nine important criteria were taken into consideration and six alternative washing liquids were selected to find out which one is more suitable. Multi Criteria Decision Making Methodologies (MCDM) were utilized while performing the ranking process. Criteria weights were found through the Step-wise Weight Appraisal Ratio Analysis (SWARA) methodology. The alternatives’ ranking was determined through the Technique for Order Preference by Similarity to Ideal Solution (TOPSIS) methodology.

The concepts “resilience” and “community” appear frequently in research on disasters associated with major society-shaping phenomena such as climate change or urbanization. The chapter seeks to explicate how social science research conceptualizes the resilient community, building on a descriptive overview of disaster studies and climate change adaptation literature. Furthermore, the chapter explores how different conceptualizations of the resilient community frame social futures amid disasters. Three key conceptualizations of resilient community arise from the literature: (i) resilient community of belonging, (ii) resilient community of practice, and (iii) resilient community as an object of governance. Patterns arising across these conceptualizations resonate with previous critiques on how a focus on resilience and communities can serve to suppress the ideas and practices of the social, in line with neoliberal politics. Yet the conceptualizations are not univocally compatible with neoliberalism and can point to a variety of social futures. Conceptualizations of the resilient community can draw attention to the self-organizing of communities, as well as illustrate how a civil society mobilizes around a cause. Ideally, the cause is in line with the interests of the disaster-affected people, who typically are also marginalized in and across societies.

The following section is included:

• Index